Spelling- The caterpillar

 

 

Our spelling lessons have taken on a very sleepy spell.

 

We haven't been doing spelling of late (but that's because i only have 10-15 minutes a day & there are so many other topics i want to cover).

 

The last spelling sonshine did was on the poem he learnt (yah, we are still at it).

I made him learn all the new words.

 

After that, i made him write the entire poem without me dictating it or spelling any words for him. At the same time, he practised his handwriting. Killing 2 birds with 1 stone i say!

More Spelling

We continued our spelling with words with 'ay' in them (i am starting with words with the long a sound).

The mini booklet i made for sonshine.

It includes words with the 'ay' in them. He has learnt to spell simple words like 'day', 'say' etc and other words like 'pray', 'play' and 'stay'.

I have done away with the moveable alphabet because i realised he really didn't need them to help him spell.

I wanted to speed up our spelling and try to cover as many words as possibe. So since i have the Five in a Row books sitting nicely in my shelf, ive decided to use them for our spelling lessons too.

I made a mini booklet; inside are all the words that can be found in the book.

He has learnt animal words like 'goose', 'goat', 'bear' etc.

June Holiday: English lessons

Over the school holidays, we did a few spelling activity and some English related lessons.

I took out our Melissa & Doug's spelling kit and let sonshine have a go (it was getting dusty!). Sonshine matched the letters to each board and wrote each word three times on his book. He learnt to spell a couple of words, thanks to this activity.

I also made him learn the spelling of some action words.

Our spelling lessons were too haphazard that i found a need to find some structure. I decided to go with Montessori's Movable Alphabet and use of phonograms. Yes, i said before i am not a fan of phonics. I am still not a fan. But i reckon that it would easier for sonshine to learn to spell if we follow phonogram by phonogram.

Nothing beats owning the original Montessori Moveable alphabet. I did think of buying it but the thought of storing yet another bulky educational kit was too much for me to take. Hence, i DIY my own. This one is much more storage friendly!

Our first structured lesson begins with 'ai'. He successfully learnt to spell words that has 'ai' in them including, 'train', 'pain', 'paint', 'wait' etc.

It turns out that the structured lesson didn't help sonshine learn his spelling any better. He is accepting of either way, a random list of words or words with the same phonograms. The good thing about him is that it doesn't take much for him to remember & retain the words he learnt. So i conclude the structured lesson is more for me! LOL.

As with Montessori's lesson, i also created a mini book.

This particular book contains words that has 'ai' in them.

We also played with Junior scrabble during the school holidays. I found it way too boring but sonshine had loads of fun.

One of the books sonshine loves to borrow from the library is a book on Homophones. After reading book after book on homophones, i decided to let him have a go at a worksheet printed from here.